1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electronic device substrate, an electronic device, a method of manufacturing an electronic device, and an electronic apparatus.
2. Related Art
In order to enhance the yield and quality of products in fabrication of electronic device substrates, the improvement in manufacturing apparatuses for the electronic device substrates is being promoted. The electronic device substrates are typified by e.g. organic electro-luminescence (EL) panels, and particularly by active-matrix organic EL panels employing thin-film transistors (TFTs) as switching elements.
The manufacturing of the electronic device substrates involves the following problem: static electricity arising due to charging of the electronic device substrate in the manufacturing process thereof leads to breakdown of elements such as TFTs and absorption of dusts in the air to the substrate, which lowers the yield and quality of products. In recent years, the size of glass substrates, which are used as a base of the electronic device substrate, is being increased for lowering fabrication costs and improving the yield. This substrate size increase causes an increase of the total charging amount in the glass substrate, which is an insulator. Therefore, the above-described problem is getting more serious.
A technique is disclosed to prevent the charging of a glass substrate during the manufacturing process. In this technique, the glass substrate is supported by grounded conductive members during the transfer of the glass substrate. For example, JP-A-10-133229 discloses this technique.
However, the availability of the technique in this patent document is insufficient to prevent charging of recent large-size glass substrates.
In addition, in current electronic apparatuses, sufficient measures for achieving electro-magnetic compatibility (EMC) need to be ensured, in order to prevent the electronic apparatus from inhibiting the operation of other electronic apparatuses due to interference of electromagnetic waves and electric fields, and vice versa to prevent other electronic apparatuses from inhibiting the normal operation of the electronic apparatus. Therefore, the casing of some electronic devices is provided with a shield for blocking electromagnetic waves and electric fields. This shield needs to be coupled to the ground of an electronic circuit on the electronic device substrate. However, since a configuration for coupling the shield with the ground of the electronic circuit on the electronic device substrate needs to be formed, the number of parts and manufacturing steps increases, which problematically rises manufacturing costs.